Why are Warlock pets so squishy? Especially the so called tank pet…voidwalker…it is so useless
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Don’t worry about it, Warrior!
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I play lock as well…so I am curious.
if your voidy feels too frail you are undergeared for the content you are doing. luckily there are things you can do.
a) make sure you got demon skin on, this will cover a lot of ground. everytime new content drops, get used to picking up demon skin for a bit until your gear rises back up.
b) make effective use of curses and fears. if you blueberry died and no curse is out you can’t really blame anyone.
c) blueberries best powermove for tanking is actually dying sorta. wait til it’s close to dead(but not too close, don’t be an ijit) resummon a new bluey while it’s getting pummeled and the next boyo flies out, snaps up threat with his taunt and you sit back and return to grinding that down.
also hi @Foniun. always cool to see guildies randomly appear in the wild.
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Thanks for the info!
What Lostlegion said, though I’d add that if you’re playing Demonology Warlock, you should be using your Felguard for pretty much everything.
Also, concerning point “c”, with the Felguard, definitely don’t do that.
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yeah felguard don’t have a taunt, just a threat aura. he can’t do the tricky trick.
important distinction to be aware of, thanks for catching me on that grey <3
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My Blueberry does just fine,remember to heal it once in awhile,but I usually run with my imp and do just fine
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My pet dies often in M+
VW can’t hold threat for long (have to keep at max distance and kiting to regain)
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w…why is your vw up in m+?
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Only time to use Void Walker is when you’re questing. One or two mobs at a time and you should be fine. If your blueberry has taken some damage, heal it. If it’s close to dying or is dead, summon a new one. It’s really not that hard.
Just to clarify with this, just because the Felguard can’t do this doesn’t mean Demo can’t do it. In fact, it’s probably easier for Demo because the fact most of Demos damage done, and thus threat generated, is actually done by pets, means your chosen tanking pet will hold threat off of you nuch easier, whereas Destro and Aff often have times where they steal threat and need to wait for the blueberry to taunt again.
That being said, while Demo should use the Felguard the majority of the time, that doesn’t mean the blueberry should never be touched. I spent much of my early Shadowlands days soloing difficult rare elites by swapping out the Felguard with the Voidwalker and doing the whole resummon VW trick whenever the VW was about to die. Yes, it does a lot less dps than Felguard, and yes, you can’t use Demonic Strength or Soulstrike talents with it, but it’s probably even safer than with Destro or Aff as you will never pull off of the VW, you have an easy and reliable quick shard generation in case your instant summon is on CD, and if you take unavoidable incidental chip damage, your pet soaks a small percentage of that.
That being said, yes, pets are very squishy this expansion. Perhaps the squishiest they’ve been since Vanilla. It doesn’t help that they don’t heal while despawned while you’re flying, so don’t forget to top them up with health funnel before you go flying into the next pack of mobs just to realise your pet only has like 10% hp left. Don’t worry about curses though. Tongues can be nice against certain enemies, but in general the damage mitigation from either curse is minimal and the time you spend spreading said curses is better off spent killing the mobs most of the time. Elites are the exception as they hit hard and last a lot longer, so sure, apply the appropriate curse to them. Won’t help a lot with them either but it’ll buy you a little bit more time for killing and resummoning.
And, yes, Demon Skin is fantastic for world content as it makes your pet survive much longer.
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As a rule, I only use VW as an emergency back-up. In Torghast especially, quick-summoning the VW was sometimes the difference between life and death.
I don’t use VW in M+. Was talking overworld.
My other pets die a lot esp in ToP (always Gorechop), PF, NW, SD, Streets.
Got a [combat] Feldom macro. Still many times I can’t afford to stand still for that long cast.
Questing is 99% Succy, even for rares. She’ll kills faster than VW and I rather face tank the damage, which is minor with over 70k health + fleshcraft and toolkit
Or in an oh shucks moment when the tank dies. I’ve bailed a couple of groups out by summoning my VW in those situations.
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ahh ok i gotcha
in that case you just need to improve pet handling. it can be difficult because the ai itself isn’t great. best bet is to simply tie a hotkey to attack and follow, put it forever on passive and get used to manually controlling the pet. many folks use their mouse wheel. recall it outta danger and send it out.
you do have to keep up on it but in the long run it’s better to control pets manually rather than automatically. some of the individual abilities can stay on autocast but others are better off it, learn what your own comfort zone is, get sunk in, and then try to broaden that comfort zone.
in m+ you want the dog out for kicks, that said most groups dont exactly look to warlocks for much interrupt help because even when we DO have the dog out our interrupt is lackluster compared to basically everyone so the imp isn’t a bad choice and is far safer as the ranged choice. of course if you be demo that’s not an option but the FG is pretty sturdy so there will be less issues overall.
The only time I have an issue with my VW dying is when I end up pulling way too much, or I forget the heal him. My biggest problem has always been pulling aggro away from him, and me dying! But luckily that doesn’t really happen that often.
Compare to how locks were before without needing VW :
Aff: dot everything and come out full life and mana from SL, lifetap etc.
Destro : chain kill mobs before they could reach you with control/cc - instant Shadow fury, conflagrate snare and Shadowburn execute.
Demo: Felguard tanking and destroying mobs without needing to “baby” him. Meta and leap into a pack and smash.
I generally find this a problem when other players run mobs to him. It’d be nice if we could (if only briefly) toggle his taunt aura to a pacify aura so he doesn’t collect mobs we don’t want.
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My wrath guard feels unstoppable right now… if your pets dying you’re just undergeared or new to demo.